In 1920, HBS innovated the case method of research and teaching where students literally sink or swim entirely on the basis of their ability to persuade peers that their analysis and recommended course of action is the right one for the company in question.

FORBES: HBS Alumni In The Global Economy

He convinced Genentech in 1986 to let him do more research on the method, and the company applied to patent the inhaled delivery of growth factors.

FORBES: The Impossible Made Possible

On a DVD created by the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, Lawton shows us what happened when he took this method to places like Morocco and Jordan -- just 80 kilometers from the Dead Sea.

CNN: Making barren lands bountiful

Dr Eastlund has also been able to draw on subsequent research on turning solids into plasmas. (This method is, in fact, used to apply coatings to the insides of tokamaks.) And the advent of supercomputers able to simulate tokamaks should also speed up the process of building a working prototype.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear waste